“…and the butcher cut the wolf’s belly open and Red Hood Bunny jumped out of it. And he hugged his dad tight, and they hopped happily back to their burrow.” Dad pauses and smiles. “And that’s the end of the story! Goodnight Son!” He stands up and switches the light off.

“Dad?!” Good Little Bunny says.

“Yes?”

“Have the wolves always eaten rabbits?”

Dad chortles. “Yes, Son. So it has been since the beggining of time, and so will it be until the world ends… Goodnight again!” Dad hunches over and kisses him.

“Goodnight Dad!”

[hr]

The next morning, Good Little Bunny wakes at dawn. All the burrow is silent. He rolls in his bed, trying to get back to sleep, but he isn’t tired anymore, so he gets up silently, tiptoes to the burrow’s door and goes outside for a stroll. The forest is alive with the chirping of the birds, and the grass is covered in dew. It’s so nice to hop and land on the soft moss…

“Eh!” Good Little Bunny exclaims. “Isn’t that a carrot?” 

Across a small glade, perched on a stump, a carrot lies in the middle of a shaft of sunlight. Good Little Bunny licks his chops. He senses that something is wrong, but he can’t resist. A few leaps and he greedily bites into the luscious vegetable.

“Kweek!” squeaks the carrot.

“Shoot!” blurts Good Little Bunny.

“Hehe!” giggles the wolf, hidden behind a large tree, as the snare grabs the helpless bunny.

The wolf trusses him up, then puts him into his rucksack.

“Are you going to eat me?” Good Little Bunny asks in a quivering voice.

“No,” the wolf answers, “you’re far too bony. I’ve got some other plans for you. I need workforce in my factory.”

The wolf carries him to his factory. It’s a grey, ugly building surrounded by a barbed wire fence and crowned by chimneys that belch noxious dark fumes. Inside, a platoon of famished bunnies works all day to produce snares that the wolf sells to other wolves for them to catch rabbits.

“Now you’ll work for me,” the wolf says to Good Little Bunny. “And don’t even think about shirking or fleeing, or I shall stew your ears.”

And so does Good Little Bunny’s new life begin: every morning he must wake at eight prompt and, after a quick and light breakfast, a long stretch of work awaits him until nightfall: stuff orange and green fabrics and stitch them into fake carrots, lug boxes full of raw material, weave ropes into nets, pack the snares into parcels waiting to be shipped, again and again, on and on, even Sundays.

But each night, when frazzled Good Little Bunny falls asleep, his dreams always lead him back to his burrow, bathed in the forest’s sweet fragrance, where his parents and siblings mourn his loss…

And one day an idea pops in his mind.

The following night, he gathers his fellow comrades outside the factory and spells out his plan.

“It’s too risky,” another bunny points out. “It won’t work, and we’ll all end in the wolf’s belly…”

“What do we have to lose?” Good Little Bunny retorts. “The wolf will eat us anyway when we’ll be too weak to work any more…”

[hr]

The next morning, Good Little Bunny sits on a big box, arms and legs crossed. The wolf glares daggers at him. “You’d better get to work right away,” the wolf warns, “or your bones will snap under my teeth.”

But Good Little Bunny does not answer, and doggedly remains still, as if ignoring the wolf’s threat.

“Don’t try my patience,” the wolf snarls. “One… two… and three!” At this word, the wolf, all claws out, pounces on the poor bunny. 

“Kweek!” squeaks the bunny as the wolf sinks his teeth into him.

“Darn!” blurts the wolf as a rope, springing out of nowhere, suddenly tightens around his neck.

“Hurrah!” whoop the rabbits all together.

Since then, the bunnies still work at the factory. But it’s not the same factory: it’s a factory painted in bright colours where merry songs echo around all day long. The old, sooty chimneys have been brought down and the fence replaced by hornbeam hedges. And now the bunnies work for themselves, making fake bunny snares that they sell to other bunnies all over the country for them to catch big bad wolves.

And their business works wonders!